The Holy Trinity of Santa Fe Landscape Painting: John Fincher, Woody Gwyn and Forrest Moses

THE HOLY TRINITY OF SANTA FE LANDSCAPE PAINTING:

JOHN FINCHER, WOODY GWYN & FORREST MOSES

The Holy Trinity of Santa Fe Landscape Painting: JOHN FINCHER, WOODY GWYN & FORREST MOSES JULY 19 - SEPTEMBER 1. 2013

Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com

cover: Monzano, 2013, egg tempera on canvas, 44” x 44”

The Holy Trinity of Santa Fe Landscape Painting: JOHN FINCHER, WOODY GWYN & FORREST MOSES July 19 - September 1. 2013 The appellation of “holy trinity” to describe John Fincher, Woody Gwyn and Forrest Moses was coined by art writer and former museum executive John O’Hern in a 2011 article for the magazine. He celebrated these three major figures of American landscape painting for their differing visual interpretations of the beauty of the world surrounding them. Although the term “holy trinity” is tongue-in-cheek hyperbole—and more sacerdotal than art critical—there is fitting pertinence here in a major exhibition of new work by each in its application to the extraordinary talent of these three venerated painters.

Each in his particular manner redefines ways of looking at the landscape, its protean vistas and emblematic details. Although painting style and subject matter vary enormously among the three, there is a remarkable consistency in the intensity of engagement and fascination from the visual encounter with the work of each. With distinctive techniques and points of view about how to express his own experience of place, each artist excels in connecting image and cognition to prime the emotions. The result is the widely-held respect underlying the apt if slightly apocryphal anointment of these three as a kind of “holy trinity.”

The pictorial strategy of each artist is quite different from what has in past times defined the ideal of landscape painting. All three privilege creative imagination over verisimilitude. Even in the precise realism of Gwyn’s detailed vistas, his canny use of unconventional perspective, ingenious light and unexpected relationships between compositional elements, elevates humble settings to breathtaking experiences. Moses’ deft, often reductive series of brushstrokes and color tracts powerfully ignite memory and emotion as deep and intense as his own feelings for the woods, ponds and streams that inspire him. Fincher has the eye of a sage, seeing in small details of Western landscape—as unassuming as cactus spines and poplar trees—the timeless and enduring strength, integrity and rustic beauty that have come to signify a powerful aspect of the American character.

All three of these remarkable artists are at the pinnacle of their painting careers. Together they represent some of the finest innovative visual conceptions in the long history of landscape painting. The “Holy Trinity” celebrates the unique contribution by each to this genre and the enlivening energy their work resonates in combination.

The art of John Fincher distills the vastness of the American West into compositions of unassuming components that celebrate the land of opportunity and individual spirit. He plucks details of the West and infuses them with such vivacity of color and form that they become nearly iconic in their capacity to evince mythic meaning that subtly references the transformation of the Wild Frontier into the symbol of the American character.

Fincher’s paintings are snapshots—candids, magnifications, celebrations—of the cactus, trees, fences, and other fragments that make up the complex beauty of the American West. Fincher’s genius—his nuanced sense for contrasting color and interplay between small and large, mundane and mythic—imbues his canvases with a sense of delight and reverence. There is an authorial integrity, both in his paring down of a majestic landscape to common details and in his audacious use of electric color and vivid shadowing, that imparts a sense of the energy and optimism as-

sociated with the land he paints. The essential component of Fincher’s work, pointing out, for example, the beauty in the smallest detail of a pine branch against the gradient of a sunset, is achieved through a singular blend of sensuality and observation. The result is to inspire grace from the commonplace.

Fincher’s work derives startling emotional resonance from a combination of rigorously balanced composition, nuanced brushwork, dramatic shadowing, and the application of intense points of contrasting colors to punctuate significant visual elements. Ultimately, his work explores diverse art historical and personal references to offer new understandings of America’s natural and cultural landscape.

His images subtly unravel the manifold meanings inscribed within representations of the American West.

With a direct honesty—the goal of “painting things the way they are”—Woody Gwyn’s humility belies the complex techniques and

masterful painting skills that have made him one of the most acclaimed realist painters of the American landscape. Use of unusual perspective and dramatic angles, an ability to render the ordinary as heroic, color that is as lushly romantic as it is grippingly real, baffling capacities to capture light that alternates between the crystalline and the veiled, produce at the brush of Woody Gwyn pictures that are superlative in their verisimilitude and compelling in their transcendent power to succinctly communicate the essence of things.

These diverse skills are mainly applied in Gwyn’s work to presenting unalloyed snippets from the places he observes. By attending as much to the most prosaic detail of a scene as he does its majestic grandeur, Gwyn paints a piece of roadside gravel as though it were a piece of sacred sculpture and renders rust on guardrails with the same reverence da Vinci felt for the sleeve folds of the “Mona Lisa.”

This respect for the smallest detail—even in the presence of breathtaking vistas—distinguishes Gwyn’s from other perspectives on landscape. And in his sense of parity between the majestic and the mundane lies a large measure of the artist’s genius to bring about

fluctuations in the viewer’s sense of reality, subtle turns in perception that shift the mind and move the heart. The visual journey that is a Gwyn painting opens the eyes to new ways of seeing and inspires enhanced depths of feeling about space, the land and the definition of beauty.

Gwyn, like van Gogh, refuses to stop working on a painting—adding, subtracting, working and reworking, constantly refining—as though this unremitting dedication to getting it all just right is required to achieve the sense of transcendence and essence that Gwyn candidly states as his aim as an artist.

Gwyn is a virtuoso at bringing out an epic realism of the American landscape, but his challenge to extract the beauty from the guardrail, stop sign or the everyday object attests to Gwyn’s mastery of painting. The viewer is captivated by the poetic affinity to make a subtle comparison between the natural and the manmade. His conception of the beautiful leaves no doubt that a mountain or ocean can be in aesthetic union with a guardrail or highway. At his hand, the ordinary suddenly is significant and the current becomes timeless.

Moses is one of the most renowned painters working today, creating abstracted renditions of landscape that evoke more than depict.

Through a reductive sense of the essential and a subtle but intense power of expression, Moses liberates the imagination and opens the possibility for contemplation of the sublime. His paintings and monotypes inspire poetic—even potentially transcendent—visual experience for the viewer and enable meditative associations of image with memory of being in nature.

Through his expression of a unique and synergistic union between mind, heart and hand, Moses produces an art of intimation rather than disclosure, where seasons are suggested by subtle color harmonies, expertly balanced compositions include no more than is necessary in the service of evocation, and a uniquely refined and fluid elegance informs each and every brushstroke.

To Moses, perfection is an illusion more appropriately replaced by authenticity of experience. By endeavoring to allow the authentic to become present in his work, Moses acquires clarity of vision that occurs best when the art-

ist relinquishes control to happenstance. Moses has mastered an essential freedom from detail without ignoring it. Distilling harmony from the thundering chaos of the universe, his paintings transport the viewer beyond mere description of a landscape and into an almost transcendental experience of the place itself.

He seeks, in his own words, “to discover nature’s truth and give life to a painted image by understanding the rhythms and pulses behind appearances.” As such, his works stress brevity and simplicity to magnify the intensity of his expressions—underscoring the importance of negative space or nothingness as juxtaposition to objects of nature that already occupy the world.

Now in his eightieth year, Moses communicates in his work a vivid sense of essence in favor of excess, a reflection of the depth of his personal allegiance to subtle elegance that blends simplicity with the complex. In striking this zen-like harmony, his paintings and monotypes exude exhilarated spontaneity and improvisation anchored by underlying and enduring calm.

Forrest Moses Virginia Reflection, 2013, oil on canvas, 42” x 60”

The paintings of these three remarkable visual interlocutors of the modern landscape combine in the “Holy Trinity” to offer a rare opportunity to compare and contrast powerful ways of considering the world’s tableaus, vistas and details. One cannot help but be moved by the sincerity and honesty that pervades the vision of each of these extraordinary artists as they approach the land. Though the expressive conventions employed by each differ greatly, the emotional valence each brings to his paintings place them in a similar orbit. Each engages the land as a sacred place and consecrates his painting of it to the greater good of beauty and its singular capacity to deliver the viewer—even if only for a moment—from the hollow paucities of everyday life. These paintings uplift with awe and gratitude, they charm and entrance. They quiet the heart and enliven the imagination. In making their art, Moses, Gwyn and Fincher unite in pursuing within painting their own sense of ineffability that truly is the divine.

JOHN FINCHER

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John Fincher Guardian, 2013, oil on linen, 70” x 32”

John Fincher Cascade Pines, 2013, oil on linen, 70” x 32”

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John Fincher Spring Rain, 2013, oil on linen, 70” x 32”

John Fincher Tumbler, 2013, oil on linen, 48” x 24”

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John Fincher Homage to William Morris, 2013, oil on linen, 48� x 22�

John Fincher Clear Mountain Pine, 2013, oil on linen, 24” x 36”

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John Fincher Deep Autumn, 2013, oil on linen, 24” x 36”

John Fincher Red Clay, 2013, oil on linen, 28” x 30”

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John Fincher Into the Woods, 2013, oil on linen, 40” x 58”

John Fincher Climber: Cinco de Mayo, 2013, oil on linen, 40” x 58”

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John Fincher October Yellow, 2010, oil on panel, 7” x 5”

John Fincher October Blue, 2010, oil on panel, 7” x 5”

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John Fincher October Red #4, 2010, oil on panel, 7” x 5”

WOODY GWYN

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Woody Gwyn Monzano, 2013, egg tempera on canvas, 44” x 44”

Woody Gwyn Thames, 2011-2013, egg tempera on canvas, 60” x 70”

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Woody Gwyn New Spring Road (Lambeth), 2013, egg tempera on canvas, 72” x 72”

Woody Gwyn Ocean Fog, 2013, oil on canvas, 86” x 60”

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Woody Gwyn Big Sur, 2008-2009, oil on panel, 12” x 37”

Woody Gwyn Quarry, 2010-2013, oil on canvas, 48” x 48”

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Woody Gwyn Lagunita, 2009-2013, oil on canvas, 30” x 30”

Woody Gwyn Sea Fog, 2013, oil on canvas, 16.75” x 12.75”

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Woody Gwyn Wave Fog, 2013, oil on panel, 18” x 24”

Woody Gwyn Ocean/Hawaii, 2013, oil on panel, 2.5” x 3.5”

Woody Gwyn Oak/Hampstead Heath, 2012-2013, egg tempera on panel, 3.75” x 2”

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Woody Gwyn Monterey, 2008-2009, oil on linen, 24” x 12”

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Woody Gwyn Espana, 2012, egg tempera on panel, 12” x 12”

Woody Gwyn Cotswold Curve, 2012-2013, egg tempera on panel, 2” x 8”

Woody Gwyn Grove/Hampstead Heath, 2012-2013, egg tempera on panel, 2.75” x 4.25” Woody Gwyn Pond/Hampstead Heath, 2012- 2013, egg tempera on panel, 4” x 4”

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FORREST MOSES

Forrest Moses Tesuque Stream, 2013, oil on canvas, 48” x 96”

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Forrest Moses Virginia Reflection, 2013, oil on canvas, 42” x 60”

Forrest Moses Mountain Water II, 2013, oil on canvas, 78” x 48”

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Forrest Moses Water Detail, 2013, oil on canvas, 50” x 52”

Forrest Moses October Reflections, 2008, oil on canvas, 50” x 52”

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Forrest Moses Lowland Woods, 2013, oil on canvas, 50” x 52”

Forrest Moses Woods with Pond, 2013, oil on canvas, 50” x 52”

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Forrest Moses M 13/03, 2013, monotype, 30” x 22”

Forrest Moses M 13/05, 2013, monotype, 30” x 22”

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Forrest Moses M 13/06, 2013, monotype, 30” x 22”

Forrest Moses M 13/10, 2013, monotype, 30” x 22”

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Forrest Moses M 13/14, 2013, monotype, 30” x 22”

Forrest Moses M 13/15, 2013, monotype, 30” x 22”

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Forrest Moses M 13/18, 2013, monotype, 29” x 41”

Forrest Moses M 13/24, 2013, monotype, 41” x 29”

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Forrest Moses Quiet Water, 2012, oil on canvas, 48� x 50�

Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com